


They Start So Soft And Sweet

by inverts



Series: At The Bottom Of A Wishing Well Was A Secret That We Dare Not Speak Out Loud [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: AU, Gen, POV Second Person, Species Swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-25
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-06-10 14:36:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6960991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverts/pseuds/inverts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having taken an ill-advised dare to climb Mt. Ebott, Asriel Dreemurr finds that he's fallen into a cave with no clear way back out.</p><p>Luckily, there are two cute fluffy monster children to help him find his way back home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Start So Soft And Sweet

**Author's Note:**

> i needed another role-reversal AU like i needed a hole in the head.  
> anyway I was [doing some doodling on tumblr](http://inverts.tumblr.com/tagged/series%3A-baby-boss-monsters/chrono) and then this happened. 
> 
> i'm approaching this AU with the idea of just doing little one-shots, so I don't feel committed to writing an entire long fic. So, there's no guarantee of a continuation, or a chronological continuation at that. Sorry. :')

Your shriek comes to an abrupt end when you hit the ground. 

The air is knocked from you, the impact jarring through your arms and legs and belly and face all, and you’d yell again if you had anything left in your lungs to do so. Your body doesn’t want to do anything but lie there, shocked into painful immobility a million times worse than when you’d embarrassed yourself belly-flopping at the pool party three months ago. The stinging slap of water on your front was a playful tap compared to this. 

Your nose is a pounding rush of pain, and you open your mouth to try to breathe, gasping uselessly. Several attempts at inhaling yield barely a trickle of air, but once your lungs remember how to do their job, the next breath comes a little easier. You’re breathing in the dirt and grass under your face, but at least you’re breathing. The next step is to try to move, and you hope nothing is broken. You don’t want your parents to know anything about this, and if you come home sporting a broken limb, you’ll definitely have to explain what happened. (You could always try to lie, of course. You wouldn’t  _ succeed_, but sure, you could try.)

Your limbs all respond with only a throbbing ache, not the sharp and intense agony of a broken bone. There are rocks digging into your hip and knee and stomach, but you shift around a little and are at least able to move off the one at your knee. Your nose hurts worse than anything else, honestly. Everything accounted for so far, you start to push yourself up on your hands. Moving toward a more vertical position results in a warm, wet sensation on your upper lip. Great. You almost start to wipe it with your sleeve before realizing that your green sweater will do nothing to hide a bloodstain, and also, you’ll probably just hurt yourself if you touch it. 

Probably the worst thing, though, is that you’re crying. You don’t know when it started, only that the blood isn’t the only liquid on your face, and when you sniff to try to hold back the tears, your nose hurts. You squeeze your eyes shut and feel more tears fall. 

You took this dare to prove you  _ weren’t _ just a scared little crybaby, and here you are, on your hands and knees in the dirt and bawling like a stupid little kid. At least nobody’s here to see you. You can wipe your eyes and find—something—for your nose, and by the time you go back down the mountain, your face will be dry and you’ll have proved that you’re not a wimp, you climbed Mt. Ebott all the way to the top! 

You push yourself to your feet, a little unsteady, and look around. You took quite a tumble, but you were pretty high up, so you should still be able to see… the way back to town…

All around you are rock walls, natural and jagged stone interrupted with carved, fluted columns that remind you of photos of Roman buildings and ruins. You crane your head back, looking up and up, until you can see the smallest patch of sky through a hole in the cavern ceiling, bright blue with wispy white clouds. Your heart starts to speed up in your chest, and you feel fresh little droplets at the corners of your eyes. Your gaze darts back down to eye level, and you spin in place, but there aren’t any trees or skylines or anything, only earth and stone surrounding you. 

Heart hammering, you come to a stop facing a dark cave tunnel. You look up again, to the hole where you must have fallen though, not just tripped and rolled down the side of the mountain like you’d thought. A moment ago you were glad nobody was with you, but now you’d let the whole class see you cry if it meant someone knew you’d fallen. 

No. Calm down. There’s no need to panic. You can still fix this. You can call for help. Still staring at that tiny gap of sky, you tug your phone out of your pants. When you look down at it to unlock the screen, though, your breath catches in your throat, and you remember how you’d felt a rock digging into your hip where you’d landed. 

It’s not simply that the screen is cracked—though it is, a spiderweb of lines spread across the entire surface. More alarmingly, an entire corner has come off, and when you push at the power button, and then push it again, and then hold it down so hard that you can feel it against the bone in your finger, the screen still refuses to light up. 

You should have listened when Mom told you to get a protective case. I’ll be careful, you’d promised. A bulky case would make it too big in your pockets, and besides, all the coolest looking ones were just flat snap-ons. You’d been so happy when you bought the one with the rainbows and stars, even if it  _ had _ earned you a solid week of teasing at school. 

You’re such an idiot. You look back up at the sky again, blinking back more tears.

“Help!” you holler up, your voice echoing. You don’t expect anyone, but what if some of your classmates followed you to make sure you didn’t chicken out? You try again. “Is anyone there? Help! Please!”

You watch one puffy white cloud pass completely over the hole, counting the seconds it takes before it’s gone from your vision, before both your shoulders and your tears drop. 

Your classmates will probably get bored when you don’t come back before nightfall and go home. That’s if they haven’t already; realistically, in your heart of hearts, you know that you probably would have returned from your climb up the mountain to find nobody waiting. Your parents will worry when you don’t come home, but it probably won’t be until tomorrow that people ask your classmates and find out you were last seen going up the mountain. If they send a search party up after you, there’s no guarantee they’ll find this hole you’ve tripped into, or that you’ll know when they’re nearby so you can shout for help. 

There’s also no guarantee that the dark tunnel in front of you leads to a way out. You think it’s likely; you’re no expert, but caves usually have entrances, don’t they? And sure, Mt. Ebott’s a mountain, but only just. You’d looked it up, and it’s barely past the 2,000 feet mark, hardly more than an overgrown hill. So it’s not that big. As long as the cave doesn’t go too far down, you could probably explore the whole thing before tomorrow. And sure, it’s nice outside in the sunny afternoon, but it’s autumn now and the nights are chilly and you’re just in your sweater. You don’t want to have to sleep here, waiting to be found. So maybe going searching for a way out on your own is a better idea.

As long as you don’t fall blindly down into a bottomless pit while feeling your way through the dark. You’ve already taken one tumble today. Maybe you shouldn’t push your luck. Maybe you should wait for the search party after all. Doesn’t everyone say that when you’re lost, you should stay put? And the police have dogs, right? They could track you to where you fell. And it’s not like the temperature’s going to drop to below freezing between now and tomorrow. (You hope.)

You’re not just deciding to stay where you are because you’re scared of venturing alone into the darkness. It’s the most logical option to stay here. You’re not being a coward; you’re being smart. 

“I think it came from over here!”

Your head whips up so fast you almost fall backwards on your rear. “Help! I’m down here!” you shout, even jumping a little for all the good it will do.

“See? I told you! Hurry up!” you hear, and then, “We’re coming! You’ll be okay!” 

You’re crying  _ again _ , but you don’t even care. You  _ were _ scared, you were so scared you were going to die here, alone and starving and your parents never knowing, but  _ already _ you’ve been found, and by more than one person, even. You’ll never take a stupid dare again, you don’t care how many names your classmates call you. 

“This way!” one of the voices says, and you furrow your brows. That didn’t sound like it was coming from above you. You let your head drop, gaze traveling to the dark abyss of cave the cave system before you. Now that you’re thinking about it, you can hear scuffling footsteps coming from that direction.

You’d never heard of a cave system in the mountain before, but apparently other people have. And being found by people actually in the cave is probably better than being found by people on top of the mountain; now you’ll be able to follow your rescuers out instead of having to wait for someone to get a rope or something. You wipe at your eyes and your nose before you remember yourself (and it  _ does _ hurt, you were right), but you can’t even bring yourself to care about staining your sweater.

Your first surprise, when you see your rescuers, is that they’re your height; kids, like you.

Your second surprise is that they aren’t human. 

You yelp and stumble backward, and they both dart forward, one of them catching you by the hand so that you don’t fall over, the other bracing you with hands—paws?—at your back and shoulder.

“We heard you calling for help,” says the one who caught your hand. “Are you okay?” Their eyes, big and bright red, examine you from head to foot, and you stare shamelessly at them in return. Their face is muzzled, their nose bright pink, their fur whiter than your hair. They look a little like a goat, you think, spotting the small nubs of horns atop their head—but then you realize they’re holding you with claw-tipped paws, not hooves, and when their mouth moves, those are definitely fangs you see. You’re pretty sure goats don’t have such defined canine teeth. Or walk around upright and wear striped polo shirts and dark slacks.

“Can you stand?” asks the other, and you turn your head to look at them, too. They look to be the same species—race?—but this one’s nose is more white than pink, and their eyes aren’t open far enough for you to really see what colour they are. Their fur is unkempt and sticks out at odd angles, and their shirt is ripped at the edges, threads hanging off from the hems.

You’re not sure what you mean to say, but it was definitely supposed to be a lot cooler than the, “Please don’t eat me!” that you squeak out.

The one who caught your hand drops it, laughing, and you cringe. “Eat you?” they repeat. “Why would we do something dumb like that?”

You duck your head and look to the side. You’d been wondering if this was a dream, but now you know better; not even a minute after encountering monsters straight out of a fantasy novel or movie, and you’ve already embarrassed yourself, which means this is undeniably reality. Your cheeks are burning, though at least you know it’s not very visible when you blush. Small mercies. 

The second monster, seeming to sense that you’ll be fine to stand without their support, slowly takes their own paws away from you, though they seem to be staring at you intently. Probably. It’s hard to tell when you can hardly see their eyes. 

“You called for help,” they say. Despite it being a statement of fact, you feel as though they’re waiting for an answer.

“I fell.” You back up a step, and neither monster comes after you, allowing you your personal space. The red-eyed, pink-nosed one has their hands crossed over their chest now, frowning at you. 

“Are you hurt?” they demand. 

You furrow your brows, staring at them. You know there’s still blood smeared across your face. Are they making fun of you? 

The one with the nearly-closed eyes is still staring at you. They’re fidgeting their paws, and their little fangs peek out of their mouth even when it’s closed. Now that it’s been about a minute with neither monster trying to eat you, you guess it was sort of a silly conclusion to jump to. Their fangs are so tiny, and even their horns are rounded and nubby. Honestly, while ‘monster’ is the only word you can think of for them, they’re not monstrous at all. 

They’re adorable. 

“From up there,” they say, indicating the hole above you with a small, upward jerk of their chin. The red-eyed one turns their head to look at them so fast that it sends their long ears flying. One even hits them in the cheek, but they don’t seem to notice at all.

You nod. “I’ve gotta get back home,” you say. “Do, um, either of you know a way out of this cave?” You’re not sure they will; after all, nobody knows about these cute little monsters living in the mountain, and maybe that’s because they’ve never left it. Maybe you  _ are _ stuck down here forever. 

There’s a large, long grin spreading on the red-eyed monster’s face as they look back to you, and even if their fangs are just bitty things, you take another step back. “You can’t get back up that way,” they tell you, and your heart drops, heavy as a cinder block where it lands in your gut. “But there’s another exit we can take you to.”

“Really?” You can’t help the apprehensive question. There’s something about the way they’re looking at you. Obviously you’ve never seen them before, but their smile feels familiar.

Next to them, the one in the blue and pink shirt nods. “Chara won’t say something that’s not true,” they say.

So Chara’s the one in the green polo with the yellow stripes. You try to give the two of them a little smile. They might be strange monsters, and you’re still considering the possibility that you hit your head so hard when you fell that you’re dreaming or hallucinating or something, but they came when you called for help, and now they’re going to help you get home. They haven’t even said anything about you being human, even though you were scared of them at first. Maybe sometimes they leave the cave and watch humans, so they’re not surprised by your appearance the same way you were by theirs? Gosh, there’s so much you want to ask them, but first things first. 

“Thank you!” You offer your hand for them to shake. “My name’s Asriel Dreemurr! What’s yours?”

The two exchange a look, before Chara takes your hand. “Chara,” they say, brusque. They squeeze your hand with just enough force to be mildly uncomfortable, but not enough to actually hurt. Their paw pads are soft and have a slight give to them, and their claws are actually dull, not sharp as you’d feared. 

When you shake hands with the other one, their grip is firm, but they hardly move their arm at all, leaving you feeling awkward. “Frisk,” they introduce themself. It sounds like an apology.

You shrug off the weird feeling you get. Your parents have taught you a lot about smoothing over awkward social situations, even if you can’t ever seem to do it right at school, and an odd handshake isn’t something to linger on. “It’s great to meet you two!” you say, and you mean it. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along to help.”

“There’s no need to thank us,” Frisk says, and it sends a little shiver down your back.

“Yes, don’t mention it!” Chara adds, brightly. “We’re happy to take you to the exit.”

As the two of them turn to lead you down the tunnel, and you fall in step behind them, you finally realize why Chara’s smile looks so familiar. It’s exactly the same one your classmate wore when daring you to climb to the top of Mt. Ebott. 


End file.
